First off, you’re claiming that if you actually saw the …

Comment on Ted Wilson: No Room for Evolution as Truth in Adventist Schools by Sean Pitman.

First off, you’re claiming that if you actually saw the Resurrection with your own eyes and spoke with and even touched Jesus personally that it would have essentially no effect on your faith or actions – and that it had nothing much to do with what the disciples, James the brother of Christ, 500 others who personally met with Jesus, and Paul did after the death of Jesus. That’s extraordinarily unlikely. If Jesus’ body had been produced after the claimed “Resurrection”, these men, not even the zealots, would have continued to promote Jesus as the Messiah, much less God incarnate – and very very few would have believed such a story given the existence of the dead body of Jesus.

If your faith would not be affected by such evidence, nothing else that I can possibly say or that even God could possibly present to you as an empirical demonstration, is going to change your mind. If you base everything on what you feel, regardless of what is going on in the real world, there’s nothing outside of your own mind that can affect you.

For those who do live outside of their own minds, however, I will point out, yet again, that even zealots are generally not willing to die for something they know to be a hoax. What Pauluc is arguing here is that a fairly large and diverse group of guys who initially ran and hid out, afraid for their own lives, would have sudden become willing to die for a story that they knew had no empirical basis in reality. That’s extremely unlikely. Fairly large groups of sane people with diverse backgrounds just don’t volunteer to put their lives on the line for what they all know is a lie – not even zealots.

Now, this is evidence that was available to the disciples in their day (which Pauluc claims wouldn’t have mattered anyway). What do we have as evidence in our day? Pauluc claims that it is essentially nothing more than what the LDS believers have – the sole testimony of the shady character of Joseph Smith. Well, that’s just not true. Christians have the testimony of prophecy, for one thing, which demonstrates a fantastic match to the life and death and resurrection of Jesus. No other religion has this type of empirical evidence that is open to all to investigate. Christianity also has independent historical accounts as to the life and death and even the reported resurrection of Jesus. Few other historical figures have so much existing documentation from numerous independent sources from so close to the actual period in time when the events took place. No one doubts the generally accuracy of the accounts of the Battle of Issus between Darius III and Alexander the Great even though the written account(s) of this battle weren’t produced for hundreds of years after. Christianity also has the independently verified accounts of the deaths of all of the disciples of Jesus, save for John, who were martyred defending the truth of their story. Again, it is very very unlikely that numerous men with wide backgrounds would voluntarily choose to die painful martyr’s deaths for what they knew, for a fact, was a lie.

Is this evidence “proof” that the story of Jesus within the Bible is true? There is no such thing as absolute proof. But, it is based on very good evidence – even the weight of evidence for those who consider it with a candid mind. It isn’t simply a matter of wishful thinking or some vague “gestalt” feeling of what one hopes to be true (unlike the position of my LDS friends on the claims of Joseph Smith). There is a solid rational basis for the Christian to put his/her faith in Jesus and His claims for His own Divinity and His promises for a very bright future for those who live according to the Royal Law of Love for their fellow man.

Sean Pitman Also Commented

Ted Wilson: No Room for Evolution as Truth in Adventist Schools
As I’ve pointed out before, there are a lot of books claiming to be “The Word of God”. How do you know that the Bible’s claim, among so many competing options, is true? – based on a feeling? That’s how you know? Did an angel show up and tell you that the Bible’s claims are true? – or how to interpret it? Were you born with this knowledge? or did you have to learn it? If you had to learn that the Bible’s claims are true, upon what did you base your learning? – and how did this basis of your learning help you distinguish the true from the false?

At first approximation, the Bible is just a book making a bunch of claims. How can you tell the difference between the origin of the Bible and the Book of Mormon or the Qur’an? In order to determine that God had anything to do with its creation, you have to read it and make judgments about it. If you base your judgments on some kind of deep feeling or gestalt sensation of truth, I say that this isn’t a reliable basis for a leap of faith. However, if you base your acceptance of the claims of the Bible on rational arguments that make sense given what you already think you know to be true, then you have yourself a much more useful and helpful basis for faith… as the Bible itself recommends.

God does not expect us to believe or have faith without sufficient evidence to establish a rational and logical faith in the claims of the Bible. Have you not read where the Bible challenges the honest seeker for truth to “test” even the claims of God? (Judges 6:39; Malachi 3:10; John 14:11; etc…). We are not called to blindly accept anything as true, not even the Bible. The claims of the Bible must be tested to see if they truly are what they claim to be – i.e., the Words of God.


Ted Wilson: No Room for Evolution as Truth in Adventist Schools
I haven’t changed my mind. I still see atheism as the most logical alternative to Christianity and any other view of God if such views of God are only based on a wishful-thinking type of fideistic faith. Why should one be a Christian or believe that the Bible is anything more than a good moral fable? – or believe that God exists any more than Santa Claus or the Flying Spaghetti Monster exists? For me, it’s because I see real empirical evidence for God’s existence as well as His Signature within the pages of the Bible and within the universe and the world in which I find myself.

You see, we are called to have an “intelligent trust” in God’s Word – a trust that is based on something more than a deep feeling or internal gestalt. Otherwise, you’re really in the same boat as my LDS friends with their “burning in the bosom” argument for faith in what is or isn’t true.

Now, it is possible to doubt the Divine origin of the Bible while still recognizing the Divine origin of the universe – based on the weight of empirical evidence. This is where quite a number of modern physicists are in their view of God. And, it is a reasonable position given the honest conviction that life and its diversity can evolve via the Darwinian mechanism of random mutations and natural selection over long periods of time to produce what we have today on this planet.

So, there are different “levels” of recognition when it comes to seeing God’s hand behind various phenomena. And, once His Signature is recognized at a different level, the implications and responsibilities change for us. It’s a “first step” toward God to recognize a Divine Signature behind the origin of the universe and the natural laws that govern it. However, once one recognizes the Divine Hand behind the origin of the Bible and the credibility of the Bible’s empirical claims, one is called to experience different responsibilities and privileges in a higher level walk with God – “in Spirit and in truth”.


Ted Wilson: No Room for Evolution as Truth in Adventist Schools
Again, there are somethings that, if seen in vision, cannot be easily misinterpreted. If you see that “there was light” then “there was darkness” and that this pattern of was used to mark off a series of seven days, that’s pretty hard to get wrong or misinterpret. Mrs. White also confirms these biblical claims by arguing that God specifically showed her that the creation week was a literal week “like any other”.

So, what needs to happen now is see which claims among competing claims are most likely true. Where does the “weight of evidence lie”? If the claims of neo-Darwinism are true, then the claims of the Bible aren’t just a matter of honest misinterpretations – they are either completely made up fabrications or they are outright lies – from God.

I will say, however, the Darwins observations did help to shed light on the Bible. For example, there were those who believed in the absolute fixity of the species – that nothing could change and that no new species of any kind could be produced by natural mechanisms. Darwin showed, quite clearly, that this interpretation of the Bible was false. So, Darwin’s discoveries did shed light on the Bible’s comments about reproduction “after their kind”. However, the Bible sheds light on Darwin’s claims by showing the clear limitations of Darwinian-type evolution – to very low levels of functional complexity over a short period of time (i.e., not hundreds of millions of years of evolution).

Again, we have science and Scripture shedding light on each other…


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I fail to see where you have convincingly supported your claim that the GC leadership contributed to the harm of anyone’s personal religious liberties? – given that the GC leadership does not and could not override personal religious liberties in this country, nor substantively change the outcome of those who lost their jobs over various vaccine mandates. That’s just not how it works here in this country. Religious liberties are personally derived. Again, they simply are not based on a corporate or church position, but rely solely upon individual convictions – regardless of what the church may or may not say or do.

Yet, you say, “Who cares if it is written into law”? You should care. Everyone should care. It’s a very important law in this country. The idea that the organized church could have changed vaccine mandates simply isn’t true – particularly given the nature of certain types of jobs dealing with the most vulnerable in society (such as health care workers for example).

Beyond this, the GC Leadership did, in fact, write in support of personal religious convictions on this topic – and there are GC lawyers who have and continue to write personal letters in support of personal religious convictions (even if these personal convictions are at odds with the position of the church on a given topic). Just because the GC leadership also supports the advances of modern medicine doesn’t mean that the GC leadership cannot support individual convictions at the same time. Both are possible. This is not an inconsistency.